George Abbot School

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George Abbot School is a secondary school (the fourteenth biggest school in the country) with arts status in Burpham in Guildford. Surrey County Cricket Club's Cricket Academy is located in the grounds of the school.

The school is currently under the leadership of headteacher, Mr. Danny Moloney BEd (Hons,) MA, FRSA. The school caters for 7 years (years 7-13) with years 7-11 split into 10, 30-pupil classes totalling 300 students a year.

Some notable alumni include Joe Wakeford, a session musician and producer, Matthew Jarvis, a professional footballer. Ashley Giles, the cricketer, and John Renbourn, the folk guitarist and previous member of Pentangle.

George Abbot School is located on the north-eastern side of Guildford, within 25 miles of London. The school is heavily oversubscribed with 350 students applying for the 300 spaces available in September each year. It currently has 1924 students on roll with around 400 in the sixth form.

1 The School House System
2 School Subjects
3 Sixth Form College
4 External links

[edit] The School House System

The old school houses were originally named after eight notable Britons, including Livingstone, Scott, Kelvin, Shakespeare, Harvey, Dryden and Newton. These were reduced to by amalgamation to four, briefly using four of the existing names before being renamed after mythical creatures (Falcon, Gryphon, Martlet and Wyvern) in the 1970s. This was subsequently amended so that the house names were those of local villages and places, for example Onslow (orange).

In 2005, the names returned to mythical creatures, and as of 2006, the houses are called Falcon, Gryphon, Marlett, Phoenix and Wyvern.

Each house is made up of two forms. At the beginning of year 7 a girl and a boy from each form are nominated to be the sport captain. Each year after that the students vote for the sports and form representatives in their class for that year.

Throughout the academic year events are staged for students to win points for their houses, including musical, sport, maths and English events. The final totals are collated after the School Sports Day (which is usually in the last week of term) and the House Cup is awarded soon after.

[edit] School Subjects

George Abbot offers students opportunities to study in a variety of subjects. In Years 7-9, students are required to participate in five creative/expressive subjects: dance, drama, music, textiles and art. They also are taught two foreign languages out of three choices: French, German and Latin, one of which is allocated to them when entering the school (French or German only as first modern language)

At Key Stage 4, students have the option of expanding their studies to include photography, Spanish, child develpoment, food and nutrition and curriculum physical education in addition to the subjects that were available to them in Years 7-9.

All GCSE students have to take one humanities subject, one technology subject (for example food technology, graphics or child development), one arts subject (such as photography, textiles or art) and one subject which they can choose from the other blocks.

Some students also take triple science GCSE, leading to three GCSE qualifications and approximately 50% of years 10 and 11 also take full course religous education, whereas the other half take short course.

[edit] Sixth Form College

George Abbot also benefits from a contained Sixth Form College with 400 students currently being taught in the facility. A Level courses are taught in a wide range of subjects.